Death of a Mystery Writer : A Murder Mystery (Of Course) (A Scribner Crime Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Barnard pens another winner!!
Review: It's a mystery of clever intrigue, this "Death of a Mystery Writer" by Robert Barnard! While not readily available in books stores anywhere, the vintage Barnard (first published in the UK in 1978) is just that: vintage. What a delight it is to read Barnard almost anytime, and this one is one of my favorites. My local library supplied me with this one of his I hadn't read and I was, once again, fascinated with his story line, his characters, his style of writing. To say he has "a way with words," of course, is a great understatement.

In this episode, Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs comes up dead--a seeminly perfect inocuous death--the overweight--not to mention overbearing--author simply (right!) collapses while imbibing in his favorite drink on his 65th birthday! Suspects are a-plenty (as is usually the case with Bernard) and a real shocker arises when it is determined that Sir Oliver's son--who certainly hated him--is to inherit most of the family fortune. In addition, Sir Oliver's latest manuscript, quite invaluable in itself, is missing. It is up to Inspector Meredith to find the killer, as murder it is. Clever, though, the murder has taken his modus operandi from an earlier novel ("The Black Widow")by Sir Oliver.... This the Inspector soon picks up on, providing him with valuable clues.

Fast-paced, well-organized, and compelling reading. This is a Barnard--if you haven't read it--you won't want to miss! There's no mystery about that! ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Barnard pens another winner!!
Review: It's a mystery of clever intrigue, this "Death of a Mystery Writer" by Robert Barnard! While not readily available in books stores anywhere, the vintage Barnard (first published in the UK in 1978) is just that: vintage. What a delight it is to read Barnard almost anytime, and this one is one of my favorites. My local library supplied me with this one of his I hadn't read and I was, once again, fascinated with his story line, his characters, his style of writing. To say he has "a way with words," of course, is a great understatement.

In this episode, Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs comes up dead--a seeminly perfect inocuous death--the overweight--not to mention overbearing--author simply (right!) collapses while imbibing in his favorite drink on his 65th birthday! Suspects are a-plenty (as is usually the case with Bernard) and a real shocker arises when it is determined that Sir Oliver's son--who certainly hated him--is to inherit most of the family fortune. In addition, Sir Oliver's latest manuscript, quite invaluable in itself, is missing. It is up to Inspector Meredith to find the killer, as murder it is. Clever, though, the murder has taken his modus operandi from an earlier novel ("The Black Widow")by Sir Oliver.... This the Inspector soon picks up on, providing him with valuable clues.

Fast-paced, well-organized, and compelling reading. This is a Barnard--if you haven't read it--you won't want to miss! There's no mystery about that! ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: Another fine whodunit
Review: Surly Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs, the author of a string of commercially successful mysteries, revels in making life miserable for those around him. When a dinner party at a neighbor's house seems to be passing with too little discord, for example, the author enlivens the affair by making manifest his uncharitable opinion of the crumbed cutlet set before him:

"Oliver Farleigh sank into a mood of intense depression: he gazed at the cutlet as if it were a drowned friend whose remains he was trying to identify at a police morgue. He picked up a forkful of mashed potato, inspected it, smelled it, and finally, with ludicrously overdone reluctance, let it drop into his mouth, where he chewed it for fully three minutes before swallowing. Conversation flagged."

After the cutlet has been downed, Sir Oliver invites these same neighbors to his upcoming birthday celebration, a family gathering regarded with dread by all concerned, not as an act of kindness but so they may serve as "diversionary targets."

Given a lifetime, more or less, of his theatrical antisocial behavior, it is hardly surprising that Farleigh-Stubbs's death--he is murdered at the aforementioned birthday party--upsets virtually no one. (The reading of his will is a more emotional affair for the principals.) But which of the author's myriad victims was incensed enough by his abuse to kill him? Well written, and with an appealing cast of characters, Death of a Mystery Writer is another fine whodunit from Robert Barnard.

(Interestingly, the last sentence of the book--or perhaps just the last, four-word phrase--seems as if it was tacked on as an afterthought, perhaps in response to someone's suggestion that the author's intent was not otherwise clear. But it was clear, and the ending would have been slightly stronger without the superfluous text.)